Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Last spring, I mentioned a Nightly Show panel discussion on vaccines. It aired as that story was cresting with the measles outbreak at Disneyland. One panelist was a strident anti-vaxxer, and I wrote at the time:

one of the panelists was a spewer of misinformation, and the medical doctor chosen to represent the science-based side wasn't up to the task of challenging her. In my opinion, it is irresponsible to give deluded people a national megaphone.

Well, I recently learned there's a term for the tactic this panelist used, and that it's generally popular with anti-science and pseudo-science speakers and debaters. It's called a Gish Gallop, named for creationist Duane Gish and coined by Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education.

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Third of four daughters, raised in a rural area outside of a small town. Now living in a moderately large city, making media and immersed in other people's media. Finally cleaning out the filing cabinet and loading its contents to the cloud.